CHAPTER 3
Mediterranean Archaeology
and Ethnicity
A. Bernard Knapp
...there is this matter of the Greekethnos, our being of the same stock and the same speech,
our common shrines of the gods and our rituals, our similar customs; the whole way of life we
understand and share together.
—(Herodotos,HistoriesVIII: 44)Introduction
Over the past two decades, archaeologists have increasingly sought to engage with
concepts of ethnicity and identity in their research. Several recent studies provide
overviews of these concepts, and discuss their origins in the social sciences as well as their
applications to archaeology (e.g., Emberling 1997; Hall 1997: 17–33; Jenkins 1997;
Jones 1997: 40–105; Siapkas 2003: 11–17). Other recent publications—not all even in
their treatment—deal specifically with ethnicity and/or identity in the Mediterranean
or ancient Near East (e.g., Malkin 2001; Hall 2002; Anfinset 2000; Lomas 2004;
Forbes 2008; Langdon 2009; Burns 2010; McEnroe 2010; van Dommelen and Knapp
2010; Stoddart and Cifani 2011). In this chapter, I focus mainly on the concept of
ethnicity, although inevitably that involves reference to the related concept of (social)
identity (see Knapp 2008: 31–5). After introducing these concepts, I discuss the
ways in which archaeologists, particularly Mediterranean archaeologists, have used
(or abused) the concept of ethnicity. There follows a case study involving the eastern
Mediterranean, and particularly Cyprus, at the transition from the Late Bronze to
the Early Iron Age. I conclude on a less-than-optimistic note that the study of “eth-
nicity” continues to present several intractable problems for archaeologists, especially
for prehistorians.
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, First Edition. Edited by Jeremy McInerney.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.